The Range Boss

Ruth Harkness of Poughkeepsie inherits her uncle’s Flying W ranch and travels out from the East to take possession, bringing her aunt, her uncle, and her fiancé, Willard Masten. A bad crossing at the ford called Calamity Crossing introduces her to Rex Randerson, an easygoing cowboy her late uncle had already chosen as the outfit’s next range boss. Masten resents him at once. He courts Hagar Catherson, the young daughter of a nester across the river, in secret, and falls in with two holdover Flying W hands, Tom Chavis and Jim Pickett, until his spite hardens into an arrangement with a hired gunman. Seltzer learned the country on an uncle’s ranch in New Mexico, and Essanay filmed the book in 1917 with Jack Gardner as Randerson.